The aborted children in “the mother” live whole, full lives in the mind of the speaker. All of the actions they perform in the poem, from sucking on thumbs to working and playing, are fabrications. In reality, the speaker has very little to work with when crafting these images. Since the children never truly lived, they never displayed any aptitude for a particular career, and so describing them as “singers and workers” is a grand leap of imagination (Line 4). The “killed children” take on supernatural qualities as the speaker hears their names in the wind and clutches them to a breast they cannot nurse (Line 11). The speaker eschews the language of simile, avoiding “like” or “as” and speaking in metaphor. This renders the images more immediately for the reader, and it reveals something about the speaker: The line between the imaginary and the real, the literal and the metaphorical is not of primary concern. Her love has made these children a full emotional reality and their deaths a true loss.

The children as they appear in the poem speak more to the speaker’s understanding of her own actions than they do to any literal children.